


Awesome Ladies Ficathon snippets

by Petra



Category: Ashes to Ashes, Big Bang Theory, Mad Men
Genre: Awesome Ladies Ficathon, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-22
Updated: 2010-06-22
Packaged: 2017-10-11 18:32:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/115603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petra/pseuds/Petra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alex Drake: Anyone's ghost<br/>Alex Drake/Jim Keats: Like a little girl<br/>Penny (Big Bang Theory): Provincial life<br/>Joan Holloway: Too clever to lose control</p>
            </blockquote>





	Awesome Ladies Ficathon snippets

**Author's Note:**

> LJ comment-sized stories written for the [Awesome Ladies Ficathon](http://ineffort.livejournal.com/199061.html), still in progress.

Ashes to Ashes: Alex Drake, [Anyone's ghost](http://ineffort.livejournal.com/199061.html?thread=4128149#t4128149) (teen, implied violence, s3 spoilers)

Little girls follow Alex wherever she goes. Dead ones, missing ones, orphaned ones; raped ones, broken ones, crying ones. Some of them look like Molly, until she doesn't know what Molly looked like anymore.

Sometimes she tries to remember and instead of Molly, she sees the girls she has saved--Dorothy Blond--or the girls she couldn't, in a rush of morgue photographs that make her stomach churn. She knows Molly's face by extrapolation, eventually, with Pete's eyes and Alex's cheekbones, and a nose neither of them recognized enough to claim.

There is a day when she doesn't remember Molly's name, and there are days after that, though not many, between the sun and the stars.

There are still little girls after that, and they tug at Alex's soul and make her ache with guilt. They are not her ghosts anymore, not even her displaced subconscious constructs. It's anybody's guess who they are, why she's the locus for all the women.

If Gene wasn't Gene, she'd accuse him of putting her onto all of those cases, but she's seen his face around the little girls who go astray.

They're Alex's ghosts, Alex's crosses to bear, Alex's souls to save.

She does her best, and though she forgets why for a while, she never forgets how.

* * *

[Just like a little girl](http://ineffort.livejournal.com/199061.html?thread=4179605#t4179605) (teen, implied sex, s3)

The reason Alex prefers to be hung over when she's alone in bed when she hasn't been alone in bed all night, is that otherwise she makes the worst faces with her makeup half on her pillow. Or the worst noises, like with that Thatcherite construct she hopes she never runs into in Boots, because she screamed once, and she might scream again, but the second time wouldn't be half as much fun as the first.

If she's not horribly hung over and she wakes up with her face in someone else's neck--someone else's dark, disheveled curls--it takes a moment to work out whether it's a dream, a nightmare, a what, exactly, and by then she's already panicking. Brilliant, Alex, she thinks, in part of her mind, and with the rest of it she says, "Sorry, good morning, sorry."

She is not damn well crying. He does not smell like Evan or her father or--horror of horrors--Gene.

She is not crying even a little bit. There's no reason to.

Alex wipes her eyes. "Shit."

Jim catches her wrist and kisses her palm. "It's all right," he says, and she nearly believes him. He's so rational, so calm, that it's catching. "I'm right here."

She can't say she wasn't expecting him, or that she wishes he'd left before dawn, not when he's giving her a hopeful smile. She kisses him instead and hooks her leg over his waist. "Good morning," she says.

"It's looking up," Jim says, and she believes him long enough to chase away the dreams.

* * *

Big Bang Theory: Penny, [This provincial life](http://ineffort.livejournal.com/199061.html?thread=4123797#t4123797) (all ages, no warnings needed, no spoilers)

Penny packs up everything she cares about: one big suitcase of clothing that might be cool enough for California, one little album of pictures, one handful of hopes. She leaves the rest of her belongings behind in the room she's had since she was ten, which is Pepto Bismol pink.

The trip scares her, and she tries to tell herself it doesn't. She's a long way from home, heading west toward the sunset and hoping that someone recognizes her as the perfect face for their new ad campaign, or the next big thing as the girl next door. After English class in her junior year and a few too many theater memoirs, she kind of gave up on thinking she was going to make it as anything but a corn-fed Nebraska girl. Nobody's going to buy her as the new Hot Topic girl or as some swoony wasting-away Victorian chick.

But she's better than the people she's leaving behind. She's better than the ones who aren't trying. She's sure of that, with every passing mile, even though she loves a lot of them. Even though she's not sure of it at all, that first night, when the motel has roaches the size of pigs and there are people next door who are either fighting or having incredibly loud sex.

She got enough of that back home for a lot less money, but she's in California now. Someone's going to see her and think she's special. Any second now.

* * *

Mad Men: Joan Holloway, [Too clever to lose control](http://ineffort.livejournal.com/199061.html?thread=4126357#t4126357) (all ages, no warnings needed, set post-s2)

When she thinks she's going to be Missus Harris for the rest of her life, she smiles at herself in the mirror the way she used to when she was a little girl. The first time she thinks it, it makes her happy; this is everything she's ever dreamed. Marrying a doctor who will take care of her, finally getting all the ink off her hands for good, having a position in the community and fine things without having to scrimp and save for them; she's worked hard for this in so many ways.

Later she smiles at herself in the mirror the way she used to when she was a slightly older girl. She has to practice the expression and the words that go with it. "How was your day, darling?"

Not, "I'm afraid of you."

"Did you enjoy your lunch?"

Not, "You've made me afraid of myself."

"I missed you."

Not, "I miss who I was before you."

If she concentrates, she can make it look real.


End file.
